January 31, 2005

Influential architect dies at 98

NEW YORK

Philip Johnson, the innovative architect who promoted the “glass box” skyscraper and then smashed the mould with daringly nostalgic post-modernist designs, has died. He was 98.

Johnson’s work ranged from the severe modernism of his New Canaan home, a glass cube in the woods, to the Chippendale-topped AT&T Building in New York City, now owned by Sony.

He designed the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., an ecclesiastical greenhouse that is wider and higher than Notre Dame in Paris; the Bank of America building in Houston, a 56-storey tower of pink granite stepped back in a series of Dutch gable roofs; and the Cleveland Playhouse, a complex with the feel of an 11th century town.

“Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space,” Johnson said in a 1965 interview.

He expressed a loathing for buildings that are “slide-rule boxes for maximum return of rent.”

He garnered attention with the AT&T Building in New York City, breaking decisively with the glass towers that crowded Manhattan. The building marked a sharp turn in architectural taste away from the severity of modernism.

The Associated Press

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